


Cornflower Roots

by LyingMonsters



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Family, Gen, Historical, Historical Inaccuracy, Rebirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24059584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyingMonsters/pseuds/LyingMonsters
Summary: Buried in the soil among the cornflower roots, the empire wakes up again.
Relationships: Germany & Prussia (Hetalia)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	Cornflower Roots

i)

When the men buried the body they didn’t leave a grave marker. There is nothing except a scattering of blue flowers, with roots that wind down down down into the soft dark soil. 

They curl around the wrists and through the hair and down the throat of a boy, eyes closed as if he’s sleeping. They have woven a fragile new cage for his heart, and for the first time in years (do years matter down here in the soil?) something is stirring. 

The boy is awake again. 

ii)

The boy remembers dying. Is that strange? Not so strange as it should be, not so strange as having a brother ( _brother,_ he tastes the word, rolling it over his tongue, imagining) with sharp teeth and bright eyes ( _colours_ existed in that bright world above but he’s forgotten them, what they look like, what they called them). Not so strange as dying _slowly_. Not so strange as taking comfort in the death, because it was the only thing that changed him in his long, long life. 

He can feel soil all around him, the heaviness of it, surrounding him, pushing into him, inside his lungs. His heart thuds, once, surrounded by soil. He cannot move, not yet, but his heart stirs itself from the silent dark, beating, beating. He is awake. 

iii)

He opens his eyes later, even though there is nothing to see. He doesn’t know if time matters anymore, in the dark, surrounded by soil. He reaches back into the warmer dark of the past and finds pieces, fragments. He teaches himself to breathe again, dragging soil in and out of his lungs through the mess of roots. He doesn’t need to do it, but it hurts, it makes him _aware_ , makes him awake. 

_Brother_ , he thinks, and then, after a moment, _my brother_. 

There is a flickering awareness of this _brother,_ of a wide expanse of land, of soil, of people. There is a breathing sense that they are his, and he is theirs. His fingers twitch in their snarls of roots, reaching, reaching, spreading out through the soil. He can taste his people’s heat, their blood in the soil, their pride, their wars, all for _him_. He’s hungry, not for bread and circuses but for wars yet to come, taking up mouthfuls of steel and fire like battlefield crows. 

He opens his mouth and the thousand thread roots around his head snap apart; breathes in, _in,_ and exhales. He’s waiting, waiting and hungry for that heat to come to him. 

iv)

The first scar he ever remembers receiving is from the blade of the shovel scraping against his chest, right over his heart. It leaves a bloom of heat. The soil is thrown away and the world turns bright, bright, a wide and breathless colour flooding into him. Pale hands reach down and pull him up, the thousand thousand roots of the flowers tearing to shreds. 

The man, his _brother,_ tucks the boy’s head under the crook of his chin and he obediently wraps his arms around him, eyes wide open to see the whole world. His chest drips a colour that stuns and draws him. It’s the colour of his brother’s eyes. Those pale hands brush over the boy’s chest, and then tip his chin up, turning his eyes to the wide expanse of so many shapes and colours. 

‘The whole world is yours,’ he croons, voice hoarse and rasping and powerful. The voice of a commander. His skin is all streaked with that fascinating colour, dripping off his lips, off the curve of his cheeks, spilling from his shoulders, a mask from where the whites of his eyes glint out. 

‘Yours,’ he mimics, fascinated that the sound comes out of him, too, broken up as it is around roots and soil. 

‘That’s right. You’re mine.’ He tips his head and the boy notices there’s that colour on his sharp teeth, too. ‘My baby brother.’

‘Yours,’ he repeats. There’s a safety in that word, and in the soft, pleased noise he makes. 

‘Just like I thought. My perfect empire.’ He throws the shovel down and hefts him into a better position as they begin to walk. The boy stares behind them until the flowers are out of sight, and then turns his eyes to the same wide expanse of colour above. 

v)

The boy kneels for the crown. His brother, his Prussia, smiles down at him, sharp-toothed, _red_ eyes gleaming. 

The crown settles heavy around his brow and he rises carefully, shoulders even, gaze even. Perfect. 

‘I present the new German empire.’ Prussia spreads his arms and bares his teeth. ‘Our future king. Ludwig.’

The crowd calls the name back to him. His name. He stays still even though he feels dizzy, staring out at bloody red and Prussian blue and eagle wings, all tangled up inside of him among the flower roots.

‘You’ve done well, Ludwig,’ Prussia whispers. Ludwig doesn’t nod, lest the crown slip, but the praise is enough. He focuses on the blue sky through the window of the old church and wishes his mouth didn’t still taste of soil and cornflower roots. 

Prussia said not to worry. That it would taste of blood soon, that everything would. He didn’t say anything about the flower roots he can still feel in his lungs, but Ludwig is commanded to obey, not to think. 

He drags in a slow breath of air.

**Author's Note:**

> A headcanon of mine about the rebirth of Ludwig.
> 
> :: Houses on the edges of old forests


End file.
